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Domain admin

Email account Domain admin Reseller

For the owner of a hosting (cPanel) account, who manages its domains and email addresses.

Spam protection

Every message from outside is checked while the sending server is still connected. Mail that fails is refused, not hidden: the sending server is told why, so a real sender learns that it didn't arrive, and nothing piles up in a junk folder for you to sort through.

  1. Blocklists. Servers listed by Spamhaus or Barracuda as sources of spam are turned away before they can send anything.
  2. Your filters. Senders you block are refused, and senders you allow skip the content checks (see Filters).
  3. Content. SpamAssassin scores each message and refuses it above 6 points. You can set a stricter limit, and refuse mail containing phrases you name.
  4. Forgeries. Mail claiming to be from Gmail, Yahoo, PayPal and other large senders without their digital signature is thrown away.

If the spam checker is ever unavailable, mail is not let through unchecked: the sending server is asked to try again a little later, and it does so on its own.

Filters

On the Filters page you decide what reaches your email addresses. Changes apply at once.

  • Block a sender: an address (someone@example.com), a whole domain (example.com), or a name at any domain (someone@*). Their mail is refused before it is even sent.
  • Allow a sender: mail from them skips the spam check and phrases. Use it for a sender whose real mail gets refused. (The blocklists still apply, and sender addresses are easy to fake, so allow only senders you need.)
  • Phrases: mail with a phrase in its subject or text is refused. Capitals don't matter, and a space matches any spacing or line break, so cheap pills also catches CHEAP  Pills.
  • Stricter spam limit: refuse mail above a lower score than the server's (6). 5 refuses noticeably more spam; 3 refuses a lot more, along with some real mail.

Set filters for the whole account (every domain), for one domain, or for one address; your email users can set their own too. They add up: every phrase applies, and the lowest spam limit counts. For blocked and allowed senders the narrowest setting wins, so a user can allow a sender you block for the domain.

A message addressed to several people whose filters differ is accepted for the first of them, and the sending server sends it again for the others straight away. Each person's filters apply to their own copy.

Mail trace

Mail trace answers "did my mail arrive?" and "why didn't it?" for mail sent from or to any address on your domains. It searches the last 28 days of this server's records, by address, domain, subject or message ID, and shows for each message:

  • when it arrived, who sent it and who it was for;
  • where it was delivered, and the receiving server's reply;
  • why it was delayed, bounced or refused: a blocklist, the spam score, a filter, or an unknown address. Mail refused before it was sent is listed too.

Choose Sent only or Received only to narrow it down. Mail queue lists mail still waiting to be delivered, usually because the receiving server is slow or refusing it for now; it is retried on its own. Sending figures are kept for 30 days.

Logging in

Log in with your cPanel user name and password. If the same user name and password exist on more than one of our servers, you are asked which server you mean. Your email users log in with their own address and password, and see only their own mail.

What you can do here

  • Dashboard: your account's outgoing mail in the last hour and day, and any halt.
  • My account: your domains and how their incoming mail is handled, your email accounts and forwarders, your hourly limit, mail sent and bounces, and recent halts.
  • Halts: halts in force and their history, with the reason for each.
  • Mail trace: mail sent from or to any address on your domains.
  • Filters: for the account, a domain or one address.

Why outgoing mail gets suspended

To protect everyone's mail from being blocked as spam, this server suspends ("halts") a hosting account's outgoing mail when it sends too much or too much of it bounces. The usual cause is a stolen email password or a hacked website form sending spam; sometimes it is a mailing to an old list. All outgoing mail from a hosting account counts together: every email address on its domains, its website's scripts and forms, and webmail. Two rules apply to your whole account:

  • Hourly limit. An account may send to a set number of recipients per hour: the limit set for it in cPanel, or 100 when cPanel says unlimited. A message to five people counts as five.
  • Bounces. If more than 5 messages bounce in 24 hours, and that is more than 2% of the recipients sent to, the account is halted. Many bounces usually mean a mailing to an old list, or a hacked account sending spam.

What a suspension does

  • The message that went over the limit is kept, not sent. Mail sent while the account is halted is discarded: it is not delivered and is not held for later.
  • Whoever sent it gets a notice explaining why (at most one every 1 hour), with a copy to the account's contact address in cPanel.
  • A halt lasts 2 hours for going over the hourly limit, and 4 hours for bounces. Each earlier halt of the same account in the last 7 days doubles it. The 5th halt in 7 days has no end: it lasts until someone lifts it here.
  • Incoming mail is not affected.
  • Outgoing email is also suspended in cPanel during a halt, and turned back on when it ends.

Removing a suspension

A suspension ends on its own at the time shown. To end it sooner, press Lift the halt on the Dashboard, your account page or Halts; mail flows again at once, and cPanel's outgoing email is turned back on within a minute. The 5th suspension in 7 days never ends on its own and has to be lifted this way.

Before lifting it, find out why it happened, from the notice, the halt's reason, and the mail it lists:

  • You sent the mail (a newsletter, a large mailing): lift it, and send smaller batches spread over several hours, or ask for a higher hourly limit.
  • You don't recognise the mail: someone else is sending as you. Change the password of the address concerned in cPanel, and check the website's forms and scripts, before lifting it. Otherwise the spam simply goes out again and the next suspension is twice as long.
  • Too many bounces: remove the addresses that bounced from your lists first.

Every lift is recorded with who did it.

Your email users can lift a suspension of your account too, from their own Dashboard. The Halts page and the account page show who lifted each one.

Changes come from cPanel

Domains, email accounts, forwarders, passwords and the hourly limit are managed in cPanel, not here. Changes made in cPanel reach this server within a minute. If something looks out of date, open the account and press Re-read from cPanel.